


Wayward Sons

by seasofgreen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s08e23 Sacrifice, F/M, Fallen Angels, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:06:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasofgreen/pseuds/seasofgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stories of seven angels in the week after the great fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wayward Sons

 

 

**day i. rachiel**

 

Rachiel remembers bright light, and then the cool touch of the water despite the speed in which she hits it. 

 

_Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. Lake Michigan is bounded, from west to east, by the U.S. states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan._

Her body burns and it doesn't take a second before she realizes that something is missing. She surfaces, head bobbing among the waves. The lake's dark surface is covered with a million flaming feathers, fire that still glows even when they submerge. Her wings are gone, burned off her body as she tumbled. Her grace was ripped into tattered fragments and she'd reached out blindly and held onto one just long enough to figure out what was happening and where she was. 

 It's over. 

The body she occupies now is real and solid, and it takes actual effort for her to kick herself onto her back. Her brothers and sisters are still raining down from the sky above. She breathes, in and out, and watches in awe as her chest moves up and down.

She's never had to breathe before.  

Her clothes tangle in her legs and weigh her down, and Rachiel strips off her jacket and tosses it away from her. Everything feels heavy. 

There's a scream, and Rachiel watches in horror as another angel falls a distance away, a wall of flame dissipating as a limp body slams into the side of a tall, concrete building. Cars swerve out of the way, and the body of her brother tumbles to the ground. He leaves no mark of wings where he lays.

She closes her eyes and tries to pray. 

"Hey, hey!" The next time she opens her eyes, a human man is swimming toward her. She couldn't feel him approaching. 

 

_Chicago. A city in the U.S. state of Illinois, the third most populous city in the United States and the most populous city in the American Midwest, with approximately 2.7 million residents. Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed._

"I…" she stares at him, body tired from keeping herself afloat. She should be tense, coiled, poised for a fight. But now… 

"Let's get you back to shore," he says, sliding an arm around her shoulders and pulling her towards the beach. The sun is just starting to peek over the horizon, and the brightness causes Rachiel to flinch and look away.

The body of her fallen brother is gone, but there are still people milling around the area with cameras. Rachiel shivers. 

It's cold. 

 

* * *

 

**day ii. elyon**

On the second day, the girl asks for his name and he has no idea what to tell her. He still can't move very well and his leg feel numb. She smiles and tells him it's funner not knowing, adjusting her hat over her bald head before rejoining the rest of her family in the kitchen. 

There's a cross hanging above the doorway. 

 

_Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chantham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Savannah is an industrial center and an important Atlantic seaport._ _  
_

"Feeling any better, honey?" the girl's mother, Annie, he remembers, walks in with a glass of water and a bowl of soup. His stomach growls at the sight of the food, and he brings a hand up to it, curious.

"Thank you," Elyon starts, suddenly feeling awkward and exposed, "for your services." His clothes stick to his skin underneath the quilts on top of him, and his hair is itchy and irritating. His broken leg, caused by a cypress tree, is plastered and uncomfortable. 

Annie settles herself into the chair next to the bed. "Nothin' I could do could thank you enough for giving my baby girl back," she leans back, and if Elyon were still an angel he'd be able to hear her bones creak and her body groan. 

 

_Cancer, known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a broad group of various diseases all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body._

She leaves a few moments later, pausing to hold his shoulder for a moment. 

He feels guilty. 

  

* * *

 

**day iii. nathaniel**

_El Cerrito is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States, and forms part of the San Francisco Bay Area. It has a population of 23,549._

"Woah, man, you don't look so good there." 

The room was spinning, and his already ruined senses felt dampened and sluggish. "Hey, buddy, you should probably sit down or something man." 

Nathaniel grits his teeth and tries to shove the man away, but he moves only a couple of inches instead of a few yards or a few miles. He growls and shoves the man harder, only to find his wrists trapped behind his back by another bar patron, the man towering over his vessel. Him, now. No more vessels. 

He spits and curses in Latin, trying in vain to pull his wrists free. The man was close to his back, and  _if only he had his power._  

 

_Vodka, wódka, водка - is a distilled beverage composed primarily of water and ethanol, sometimes with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits or sugar._

"Fuck!" he shouts, a word he picked up in the back alley he'd slammed into four days ago. "FUCK! Let me go!" 

A different man, this one burley clad in a black shirt and dark pants, loomed in front of the one he'd tried to shove. "Is there a problem here?" 

"This dude's off his ass!" the one holding him exclaims.

"Time to go, friend," the burley man says, taking hold of Nathaniel. 

"You don't know!" he turns and shouts at them, " _You'll never fucking know_!" 

Nathaniel half-stumbles, half shoves himself out of the bar, shaky on his permanent feet. 

The damned traitors will pay for this. 

 

* * *

 

**day iv. amriel**

"Hey Amy, you comfortable back there?" Valerie turns and shouts out the window of her pickup truck, red velvet hair tumbling out the window into the breeze. 

Amriel knocks on the back of the window, twice, three times, barely moving from her place in the truck bed. "I'm good," it said. Mountains and miles and miles of flat, dusty ground rolled past them, and the sun warmed her face and close-cropped hair. The fire had singed most of it off, but the woman she'd landed on had managed to fix it into something that humans, or at least this one, considered rather stylish.

The rev of the engine under her body had become a constant companion over the last couple of days, as had the human in the driver's seat. 

"I feel like I'm flying again," goes unspoken between them. 

  
_The Black Rock Desert is an arid region of lava beds and playa or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conversation Area, a silt playa 100 miles north of Reno, Nevada that encompasses more than 300,000 acres of land and contains more than 120 miles of historic trails._  

 

"You look like a dog with it's head out the window," the redhead remarks, laughing as she stopped the truck and shut the door behind her. Amriel stands and stretches, muscles and bones and joints popping and creaking. "And sunblock, don't forget the sunblock!" Valerie exclaims, throwing a large, dark black bag over her shoulder, and tossing the bottle to Amriel. "Can't have my muse getting burnt, now can I?" 

Amriel laughs, a high, tinkling sound that surprises her. 

She hadn't heard it for several centuries before the fall. 

A warm smile comes over Valerie's face. "Let's just hope we get some good shots today," she sighs, "Girl's gotta eat somehow. You think that mountain be good in the background?" 

Amriel had seen humans before, of course, watched over them for thousands of years, but she'd never imagined it'd be like this. She understands now, why some would choose to risk the wrath of Zachariah, Uriel, Raphael, Naomi. It felt good, she thought, as she watched her companion unload her photography equipment. 

 

_Valerie is a feminine given name in English, derived directly from the French Valérie and ultimately from the Latin 'Valeria.' It means strong, or brave - valiant._

"Hm?" Amriel cocks her head, she'd missed whatever she'd been told.  

"I said," the redhead barks out a laugh and crouches down low into the sand, reaching out a joking hand to pinch the side of the angel's knee, "next time you fall from the sky, don't crush my house!" 

 

* * *

 

**day v. haziel**

 

It was difficult, not having an identity, Haziel realized. There were thousands of years of writing and books and spoken whispers and prayers, but here, here in the place they were meant to protect, none of it mattered. Did anything they do matter? 

He grimaces, fingers absently playing with the IV lines. Five days in this hospital. 

"No driver's license, no social security number, no birth certificate anywhere with his name, no family, what are we supposed to do?" he could hear the nurse outside, and he could almost see the worry written across her face. She'd been nice to him, though. Probably had children, he thought, something he used to be able to tell instantly, something that would make her so attached to the John Doe found in front of the entrance to the hospital. 

 

_Huntington is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York, USA. Founded in 1653, it is located on the north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County, with Long Island Sound to its north and Nassau County adjacent to the west._

 

The police that had visited thought he was lying, the name Haziel strange to them. 

No one had seen him hit the ground, no one had connected the "meteor shower" with the man in the parking lot, and he'd been left to watch the replay of his brothers' demise through the tiny television hanging over the bed. 

Someone would find him. Thousands and thousands of angels walking the Earth. It was inevitable. It had to be. 

The next time the nurse comes in, her eyes are black. 

 

* * *

 

**day vi. temperance**

 

After being here for several days, days that she now measured in sleep and meals and the steady movement of the sun across the waves and her dark skin, Temperance found that she sort of liked it here. It felt like she had stepped into a human's heaven, houses painted in pastels and streets paved with cobblestones. It was the kind of place she'd never been able to stay in for long. 

 

_Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. It is the southernmost city in the Continental United States._

 

"Hello," Temperance says, twisting her head to look at the cat coiled under the patio. It was a beautiful cat, well-fed and covered in tortoise fur. She tucked her bare feet underneath her on the wicker chair, and reached a hand down to it.

 "Are you lost, too?" 

It meows, and a woman across the street in a boutique opens a can of tuna and sets it on the front steps, sending it running. The woman on the steps watches her for a moment, wanting to believe what all of the drunks that saw her said - a girl who fell from heaven. Temperance regards her for a moment, but the woman breaks eye contact and flees back inside her store.  

"I would think not, then." Temperance whispers, settling her back against the chair and watching the sky, just in case.  

 

* * *

 

**day vii. castiel**

 

_Lebanon is a small city in Smith County, Kansas, United States. The population is 218. In 1918, a scientific survey established the geographic center of what was then the United States lies near the town and a monument was subsequently erected at the site._

Castiel opens his eyes and blinks, the room still dark despite it being the early morning. The bed is nice, he supposes, better than ones in motel rooms, though his opportunities to sleep on those were few and far between. He’s still not accustomed to closing his eyes and breathing in slow. It feels too much like falling.

 

_Outside the city, a hidden roadway contains the entrance to the Bunker of the Men of Letters, sealed since the order was obliterated in 1958._

Cas is pressed against the wall, cool concrete chilly on his bare back and legs tangled in the sheets.

"Dean,” Cas says, rolling himself over onto his stomach and looking up at him. “Wake up.”

Dean snorts, reaching out and grabbing for him.

“Stop it,” Cas sighs, though he presses his nose into the skin between Dean’s neck and shoulder. He can feel Dean’s fingers carding through his hair and he mutters something that sounds and almost feels like a prayer. Cas shivers, goose bumps rising on his skin. It’s a new sensation, but not the most surprising one.

“Morning.” He mutters, sliding over on the bed so Cas has more room.

Dean kisses him, nice and slow and long, fingers under his jaw and on his chest. Cas moves in closer until they’re pressed up against each other, knees and chests and torsos touching. 

Dean kisses him one last time before sitting up and sliding on his jeans. Everything still feels so very fragile and new, like if he stepped out of this room it all could fall apart again. At least it's his choice now, when it comes to coming and going or just choosing to stay, here, in an underground bunker with two brothers that saved the world and a mismatched family of prophets and hunters and hackers. 

Cas stretches as he gets out of bed, shaking his legs out of the blankets. 

“We’re on breakfast duty today.” Dean says, buttoning up his shirt. “Charlie left to go investigate the lead out in Chicago.”

Cas nods, but the corners of his mouth quirk downwards sharply. She must have left in the middle of the night.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Dean says, hooking his thumbs in the pants Cas has finished putting on. Jimmy’s pants, his vessel’s pants, now they’re just his.

“If she needs help I still could-“ Cas struggles in Dean’s grip for a moment, subconsciously bringing a hand to scratch his at his neck. There’s no mark there, Metatron healed any damage, but sometimes the wound still feels open. This is still his fight, no matter if he is angel or human or nothing.

“I know,” Dean replies. He remembers the other human Cas, still willing to throw himself into the fight with no angel mojo and high as a kite. “I know you can.”

They’re quiet for a moment and Castiel realizes he can close his eyes without the sensation of falling.

 “What about pancakes?” 


End file.
